The Guide to Starting a VEX Robotics Team

In this section, I’m sharing my story so that you can see the things I learned, mistakes I made, etc. It’s my hope that sharing this will help you avoid some of the things I struggled with.

 

I took over for an existing robotics coach, so I was lucky enough to already have all the parts my students needed to build two robots. However, my parts were the old Cortex parts rather than the new V5 and many of them were worn out and in need of replacing. In my first year as a coach, my students met on Mondays and Thursdays after school. We had 10 students working on each robot and it was… hectic. 

       

I quickly found that each team had too many students on it, and many kids didn’t get hands on time with the robot at all. We also didn’t have enough time to get a meaningful amount of building done, and there was no time to teach my less experienced students the skills they needed for success. One important thing to remember is that in VEX, the students are doing the building and research and should be the only ones with hands on the robot. This is their challenge. However, if you have students coming in with no experience, taking time to teach them the basics before they dive in is critical. We didn't have this.

 

For funds, we relied on parent tax credit donations. This gave us enough for tournament registrations, but not enough to buy new parts.

 

At the end of my first year, I put a few major changes in. First, I wrote a grant to get three of the V5 Competition Super Kits. We also used club funds to buy a 4th controller/robot brain. I also worked with my school to get VEX Robotics set up as a class/club combo. Students taking the class would also be in the club and vice versa. I also started a sponsor system, and at the beginning of the next year my students worked to secure the group several sponsors.

 

• As a side note: For grants, I highly recommend looking at STEM grants in your area. When you write the grant, think about how parts could be used both in classes and in a club. If the parts you are asking for in the grant can also be used to enhance classroom education, that will generally help you with being chosen. 

 

My second year I watched those efforts pay off in a big way. Because we had more parts, we were able to field four teams. I had six students on each team. I limited my club/class to 24 students, and kept a waitlist on hand in case any spots opened up. Students had to fill out an application to be considered for the group.

 

Since we were a class club combo, we also had more time to work. My students met in class every other day. On Mondays they met after school and led an official meeting. Students took club minutes, balanced the club budget, and voted to order more supplies. I allowed students to run the meeting, though I set up a powerpoint guiding them through certain things they needed to talk about and I handled filing and finishing all the paperwork for the kids. I also ran the first couple meetings myself until I had taught the students how to run a meeting smoothly.

 

For budget, we now had sponsors from the local businesses that had provided us with funds. 

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When we had supplies we needed that the students didn’t think of, I would compile a list of those supplies with the costs and give it to my club secretary to present at the Monday meeting. The kids then voted on if we wanted the supplies and how many we should order. 

 

Since most of our funding came from tax credit donations and sponsors, we handled budgets and talked about spending during club time so that it qualified as extracurricular money. We also looked at tournaments and I had the students vote on which to enter. I let the kids choose three tournaments a year to compete in, depending on tournament availability.

 

Thursday after school I let students come for an optional build time. Teams that needed a little extra time had that on Thursdays. 

 

So while my first year was a little rocky, we figured things out. The last few years have gone well, and this new system seems to have solved most of my first year problems.

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Running a Class/Club Combo

Because I run the group as a class/club combo, I am able to add a bit of structure to our year. I’ve found that while a high school group can run itself, middle school students need more guidance. 

 

I always start the year with three days focusing on class rules and expectations. Students learn about the rules, practice fire drill and lockdown, then make posters illustrating the class expectations.

 

After we have gone over the class rules, I introduce the latest VEX game to the students. We will usually watch a video on it, then do a scavenger hunt through the rules. 

 

The next two weeks are all foundation work. I do team building activities and assign students into a variety of groups so they get used to working with each other. I show them how VEXCode works and have them spend a day practicing basic programming so that every student has some familiarity with it. I teach students about gear combos and gear ratios and have them build several of the most basic mechanisms to get familiar with robotics. Because my students come from all skill levels, this time is critical to help my new students learn how VEX works and help my old students review. During this time I also introduce the robotics notebooks and explain the importance of keeping a record of your work. 

 

 Finally I let my students choose their teams and discuss team jobs. At this point, the work shifts to the students. VEX Robotics is a student focused and student led activity, with students researching, building, and testing their robots. While I am heavily involved for teaching them the basics, I take a step back when it is time to start building the tournament robots, and act more as a guide.

 

Despite this, I do find setting milestones helps the students with their pacing. I always start them out with a two-week chassis challenge. Students are given two weeks to get a rolling chassis built. At the end of the two weeks, they compete in a race around the classroom.  

 

With the VEX games, as long as their robot can roll, they can at least play defensive in the tournaments. So, I use this challenge to encourage my students to design their chassis before anything else.

  

Students then spend the next few months building their robots and testing them out. For grades on the class portion, I give weekly participation grades as well as grades for several work logs. I have a set of logs for each job that the students fill out and turn in every other week to summarize what they worked on and how they are helping their team. The logs are designed to help students stay on task. If a student has more than one job, they get to pick which log they fill out each week. Once the logs are graded and I give them back, students are free to include them in their notebook.

 

I also encourage my teams to do skirmishes as often as they can. When a team is skirmishing against another team, it gives them a chance to see the robot in action. Every other week or so, we also will watch a reveal video for another team's robot. I'll then have my students analyze and discuss the pros and cons as a whole class. 

 

The rest of the time is theirs, and students spend a good chunk of the days researching robot ideas, improving and testing their robot, and searching for solutions to the problems they come across.
 

After each tournament my students will make changes based on how they did. I try to get them signed up for 3 tournaments spread out between November and January. I’ve found that anything earlier than November doesn’t give the kids enough time to build, but you also don’t want more than one tournament a month since it can be quite a bit of work.

 

It does get tricky around February. If you have some teams going to State, and some teams not, I suggest splitting up what the kids do. The teams going to State should keep building and adjusting their robots. Your teams not going can do a variety of other tasks, such as cleaning up the VEX parts, taking apart old robots, and fixing up their current robots for any displays during assemblies, science fairs, etc. 

 

The one challenge of a class/club combo is that when the tournament season ends, I still have the kids in my room. At this point I shift back into teacher led instruction and use it as time to dive into a variety of robotics with the students. I have students begin by making robotics reports. This report is a two part effort. Students must write me an essay about their VEX season, and work with their team to design a PowerPoint presentation that they will present to the class. 

 

After the reports, I have students do a variety of building challenges that help them explore robotics and learn more about different types of robotics. Some of the lessons I’ve run are:

 

• Programming with Sphero Robots

  • Students use block based programming to program a Sphero that can roll through a maze.

 

• Sphero Drop Challenge

  • This is a challenge where students have to engineer a capsule/parachute capable of slowing down a Sphero enough that they can safely drop it from a two story building. It’s a variation on the egg drop challenge. Once the Sphero has landed on the ground, it must use student made programming to escape the capsule and roll at least 10 feet away from the landing site.

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• Real Life Robotics

  •  Students complete a research project on real life robotics uses. It ends in a presentation to the whole class.

 

• Lego Mindstorm Challenges

  • Students use Lego Mindstorms kits to learn more about line sensors, various buttons, building, and programming. We use the online lego Mindstorms curriculum (https://education.lego.com/en-us/downloads/mindstorms-ev3/curriculum) to delve deeper into robotics.

 

• Lego Mindstorms… battle bots!

  • Students use lego mindstorms to build small robots to compete with. Then, using the lego infrared remotes, they compete in a classroom battle bots game where their robot must knock all the other robots off a table.

 

• Once the new game is announced for next year, I allow the 7th graders in my class to start planning a robot for next year, and even start building it if they have time. Meanwhile I have my 8th graders research the robotics programs offered at the high school level.

 

My system isn’t perfect, but it does provide a good balance of academic classwork and time for students to freely build and explore as they learn about robotics. The biggest challenge is keeping students learning and engaged during the off season. Even so, after four years at it, I’ve found a good balance.

 

So there you have it! I hope this was helpful. If you think of anything you wish I had included, or see any errors in this page, please let me know through my contact form.